Sitting at the kitchen table in the late-1960s, I recall listening to my parents lament “the new highway,” or what we commonly refer to today as “290.” Beginning at the shoreline of Lake Quinsigamond and stretching across the city to the border of Auburn, homes, backyards, schools, businesses, ponds, and playgrounds vanished. The new landscape uprooted and upset a lot of people from one end of the city to the other. For kids, it changed our experience of where we could play. For homeowners, it impacted property values. For everybody - then, now, and forever - it introduced the sound of high-speed traffic and artificial light across the evening sky.

Pondering the imminent destruction of two former churches in Worcester, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Notre Dame des Canadiens, I’m reminded of what it felt like fifty years ago to see Adams Square Elementary School leveled. I’m reminded of the anger Italian-Americans felt about the concrete wall constructed in front of the main entrance of Mount Carmel Church. I’m reminded that things don’t always turn out the way we’d like, that life goes on, and that adapting to change isn’t always easy.